Exit strategies

[tinyjo]

I've been thinking about it recently and it's occured to me that one of my major mechanisms for dealing with bad, difficult or uncomfortable situations is to come up with an exit strategy. That's not to say that I won't be intending to try and improve the situation or turn it around, although of course you can't always. It just helps me to feel more in control and less stressed to know that if I really need to, I can step back, get away, whatever. It takes the pressure off. I think that's one of the reasons I find myself so uncomfortable with the idea of myself as a parent - there's no exit strategy you can really plan there.

I should do a real life update soon, really. I'll get to it, I promise.

Comments

Re: Hmm...

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

Well actually, yes, it is that bad. From most parents' point of view the rewards are commensurately high though - I habitually compare it with heroin addiction in terms of the quality of happiness produced and the total f###ing up of your previous life.
But tinyjo has an excellent point; it's much easier to quit heroin than parenthood if you decide the tradeoff doesn't suit you - I guess it comes down to how attached you are to your existing life.

BWAH HAH HAH

[t--m--i.livejournal.com]

iirc the current research suggests that having kids makes people less happy in general due to the tremendous stress. (The good news was that people in general were happiest at around age 70, which gives us all something to look forward to!).

My own observation is that older parents do better (again in general). More experience, more money, more practice at planning and juggling stuff, more time to watch other people have kids and see what works and what doesn't. That said, I know some people who had kids in their early twenties and coped fine, but they were all old-heads-on-young-shoulders types (rather like your good self in fact, tinyjo!).

Re: Hmm...

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

it's much easier to quit heroin than parenthood if you decide the tradeoff doesn't suit you

Exactly, and that's part of what puts me off. As well as using this when things are bad, I often use it to help me feel comfortable about taking a risk - if things went bad I would extricate myself via so and so - but that's just not an option with kids. If you take to it then you're fine but I think I would find the early years overwhelmin - I function particularly badly on broken sleep.

I dunno

[applez.livejournal.com]

Getting rid of the kids is mostly a factor of external social pressures, assuming one makes up one's mind to get rid of them (one way or another). Heroin, on the other hand, is massively rewarding to the addict, and becomes an all-consuming obsession that has shown to break even the hardest-willed person.*

It would be interesting to compare rates of 'broken' families, outright orphans, foster children ... and that of heroin addiction. I would dare say heroin is the harder dependency.

*And yes, I think there are plenty of unloving, loveless parents out there (in general) to borrow a term.